I really, really hope that 4.x has more patches set outside of Europe.
If you don't count Paper Heron and Cheng Heguang, because two Chinese characters are going to be released every single year in the CNY patch, then Ramona is the only non-European character of the entire 3.x series.
That's one out of 18 characters, from Sentinel to >!Narcissus!< (again, not counting the CN duo). Even 3.5's other character was the fourth blonde French woman released just this year, instead of a second Mexican/Latin American character like Añil.
I know a lot of people dismiss posts like these with arguments like "I don't care about characters' nationalities or where the story is set, I just care that they're well written and that the story is good!", which is fine. Everyone plays for different reasons and it's your right to not care about something like this.
But still, other players do! The first two years had a lot more variety when it came to settings, and this change of direction is noticeable. Year 1 specially had an unmatched globetrotting vibe, going from the US to India to "Greece" to Australia to China to Austria and so forth, each patch felt super fresh. The second year had a bigger focus on the Americas (US, Brazil and Argentina) but still got some variety with a patch set in the middle of the Pacific and of course a couple in Europe lol
We already know the main story in 4.x will be focused on the British Isles, but nothing is stopping the Event patches to be more varied. On 3.x even the "side quest" patches like 3.1, 3.8 and 3.9 were all set in Europe.
I know that at the end of the day these Reddit posts are borderline useless (just like all my posts about wanting more dark skinned characters), and BluePoch just does what they want and ultimately caters to CN's opinions over anyone elses, but nothing stops me from voicing my disappointment either. tbh, my interest on the game is at an all time low, I've been playing for two years and for the first time none of the upcoming patches have any characters I want to pull for (including the current one). I already took my first break and uninstalled during the AH collab, but now that I'm back I don't feel super compelled to keep playing/logging in outside of just reading the story. I keep hoping there's some kind of shake-up and I fall in love with the game again, but oh well :/